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So, I was in Enniskillen recently, and was chatting to the guys that put together the 2000AD fanzine Sector 13 – issue 3 out now Dredd fans!

I mentioned that I have an old script that I wrote a while ago, a 12 page Tale from the Black Museum (it’s a fun little idea I think) that I’d pitched to Tharg and he’d rejected it (for sundry reasons, only three them amounted to “this is terrible”). Actually, for funsies here’s the plot:

We open on Henry Dubble down in the black museum’s basement where he’s fishing out giant, Justice Dept 1 issued “Life Candles” (issued by the City to all citizens at birth in the event of one of MC1’s regularly scheduled disasters) and he starts telling the tale of the House Of MegaWax. A run down waxwork whose business has been destroyed by the city’s new craze of competitive eating. A solitary fat tourist stumbles in, as they’re despairing over their bills. He dies, they panic and hit on the brain wave of converting his body into wax using the plot-convenent alien waxweavils who can eat anything and secrete wax which they use to make a Two Ton Tony Stubbs waxwork. This starts the business with a new plan: invite fatties, kill them, make unbelievable large waxworks attracting more fatties… and create the greatest House Of MegaWax ever seen. All is going great, when, on a visit from the Mega City Obese Orphanage and Family Free Fatties Association, they take the fattest orphan off to the side intending to do him in, but the plan is ruined when the fattie unzips and reveals he is, in fact, Judge Dredd and two other judges in a large fat suit. They fight, Dredd wins. Henry Dubble closes the story by revealing what happened to all that wax and the waxworks: they remain in constant use creating the Life Candles, nothing goes unused in Mega City 1.

I think Matt’s biggest problem was there’s almost certainly a touch of old fashioned silliness about it.

The chaps at Sector 13 liked the idea, and said they could print it, but it would need to be split in half. Now, tbh, I’m not keen on splitting a stupid one off in half, it doesn’t have the weight (no pun intended) and I’ve worked on fanzines before and I know the time delay between issues can run to several months, killing any possibility of a story carrying momentum.

So I mulled it over on the drive up from Enniskillen and thought I could write up a different script that is shorter, and I came up with something that I thought would be fun. I wrote it up in a blitz and sent it off to a few readers who’ve come back with a collection of notes.

This, in itself, has been instructive – getting good notes from several sources has sort of had my head turning – it’s impossible to implement every note (and some of the core ones are actually contradictory) so I’ve got to figure out how to rewrite it while keeping my own voice in it.

It’s also taught me, next time, be more selective, one good reader at a time, maybe.

On the plus side, the notes I got were more additive than anything nothing critical of my writing so much as suggesting elements of the plot that could do with being altered one way or another (one key element in particular had notes suggesting I do thing A, and notes suggesting I do the mutally exclusive thing B)

Once done, I’ll send it to Matt. I’m not terribly convinced he’ll pick it up (I mean there are so many good dredd writers) but if he doesn’t I may end up writing / drawing it for myself since it’s got some fun visuals going on in it.

I still have to do Couch to 80k week 8, the proper writing week, but my aim all along was to write some comics and this is a proper comic script, so I’m happy about that.

Let’s see. To recap day 4, a pause on writing and a little chat about building an ideal schedule, with a 10 minute window to write one out. These are the sorts of things I’m never sure I’m right or wrong – born partly out of the fact that there isn’t really a right or wrong way to do them, and partly because sometimes I’ll do something so quickly I’ll spend 8 minutes staring at it thinking “surely I’m wrong on this”.

So, a schedule of sorts, I think if you’re a long time reader of my blog, you’ll know I’m half obsessed with schedules. I mean, I never manage to stick to any of them, but I don’t half spend a long time thinking about them. So when Tim asked on day 4 about your perfect schedule it took one minute to write out my answer. And it’s this:

I mean, it’s not ambitious, I don’t think, and it’s pretty doable. Real life gets in the way, of course, and I get in my own way. But that would be as good a day as you could hope for. The Drawing in the schedule is my day job though, but I typically draw until 1am, so 12pm is a good stop point for me. And 2 pages of comic writing SHOULD be achievable within 3 hours (it’s wildly unambitious if anything) but doable.

Of course, I will never ever get to do it. But you know, live in hope.

Day 5 was a rewrite of the Day 2 climactic scene of my novel (remember, it’s all about writing a novel, even if I had intended to do just do this course to help me build up to writing a comic, I ended up having to come up with a novel – it’s not brimming with originality, if anything it’s basically the Masters of the Universe film or John Carter – normal schlubb finds himself the centre of a galaxy wide revolution and with the help of aliens, a princess and robots has to destroy the creature taking over the universe, then he goes back to his day job. The only unique point is, in the remix, the hero really leads the dullest life imaginable, and goes back to it a changed man).

Anyway, day 5, rewrite, that was fun, taking the final scene and giving it a different spin starting with the words “that’s not how I remember it…” (and, for your reading pleasure, or for you to completely ignore, that bit is at the end of this longish post)

Day 6 – today’s task was to write five scenes that are important key points in the novel. Remember, I’m not coming to this bootcamp with a novel fully formed, my main ideas are comics, so I’m making this on the fly, but even so, I was happy with some of the scenes.

Kind of mad I’ve been at this for 7 weeks (a little longer if you count some of the mid-week gaps therein).

Week 8 will be basically timed writing, taking this first steps and moving towards a full length novel with them. I’ll do that last week, though I’m not convinced I have a novel in me.

After that, as per various recommendations, I’ve bought Ursula LaGuinn’s “Steering the Craft” (such a great title) and will hope to spend a similair amount of time per day doing the exercises in that book.

He came in, the Accountant. Weedy and desehevevilled. In his right hand he’d forged a sword out of some sort of iron rod that looked like he’d been adjusting a fire with. He really did look ridiculously out of place in the great majestic hall of Aucheron, above him, through the glass ceiling you could see the twin suns revolve around each other, vast streams of energy intermingle.

And in front of him…

Well, my Lord, you stood. Towering over him, senew, muscle and energy, crackling. Majestic in your strength. Armed with eight curved swords, ready to battle against the human to save the great palace, and everyone in it from whatever foul deeds his otherworldy nature would perform.

I saw you confront him, calling him the coward he is, challenging him to best you, in all your powerfull glory. But he could not, and I heard him admit as much. At least, he could not on his own.

I saw him call forth the cowards and traitors who had been, until now, rightfully banished to the edge of the world, they poured in, numbers the likes of which I have never seen. But you were undauted. What where they but as an insect to the tail of the Mighty Orayax.

To my shame, I witnessed the treachery of the Princess – A hex on her name – YOUR VERY DAUGHTER – channelling her energy through him, using your own power against you.

But you were, of course, too cunning for the human. He may hold dominion over the numbers of the sheet, but your power is of such vastness that it dwarves him and all how ally to him.

“This ends now” snivelled the coward, little realising the end was for him, not you.

It was my great honour to be in your presence when you redirected the power flowing from the Princess, to him and then to you. Using their own energy to take out the ragtag group of treacherous villains they had assembled.

And now, five scenes from today’s workshop.

1. Peter’s in the office. This is our first view of his life. It will be a montage scene, of an entire year. His world is small. He goes to work, watches the seasons pass. He sits at his desk. His eyes light up when Julie walks past, he goes home to a small empty flat and opens a tin of beans and decides to just eat it cold. Peter’s life is empty except for the scifi that he loves. A room full of toys. A bookcase full of scifi novels. A set of DVD of classic old british scifi.

2. A dimensional breach, an new world beckons, in the bathroom of Fleming, Fleming and Fullerton. Peter was in the loo, trousers by his ankles, when a princes, a robot and a beastman, beckon him, they need him, they need his help. He runs forward.

3. He’s on a precipace, to the left are the armies of the evil lord, to the right are the new friends that Peter has made. He has to make a choice, sacrafice himself to save his friends, or save himself. Peter chooses, and somehow makes it out alive. But from here he will never be the same.

4. The climax, Peter versus the great monster. Peter’s friends trust him, the princess trusts him, Peter has to win this battle. But he’s not strong enough. Until he is.

5. The return. Peter decides that he doesn’t want adventure, he doesn’t want airships or princesses, or robots or monsters. He goes back to Fleming, Fleming and Fullerton. But he’s changed. He won’t take any more nonsense, and he asks Julie out and ends with a promotion. But that’s not enough and soon he’ll start his own accountancy firm, a changed man.

I love my job, but it does feel like it consumes every minute I throw at it (and many minutes I don’t).

It’s the nature of it, I suppose, drawing is a calling rather than a 9-to-5. But I’d like to get to 9-to-5 (impossible with kids and family obligations, but it’s a goal, right?)

Don’t get me wrong, outside 9-5 I’ll still be drawing, just not the stuff that is for deadlines.

I think I need to think realistically about what I can do with my free time. Last year I did some acting, and I really enjoyed it. I may still do more (the rehearsals ate up a fierce amount of time, but I did enjoy the regular getting out of the house, even if I lazily drove up the street most of the time).

I’m coming round to the idea of doing one writing/drawing/lettering/colouring project of my own a year. One 40 page THING. A complete book that belongs to me would be lovely. Sure it’d be nice to be paid to do a thing like that too, but you know if I’m paying my bills, then who cares, right? I get to play.

I know what the first thing will be (let’s call it “WR”) and I have a notion what the second thing will be and .. really, there’s no point going further than that. The projects are likely to be unrelated to each other, except in that they’re things I want to do.

Of course, that may not happen. I always have plans.

Right now “WR” is a bunch of half written scenes, and a rough plan of 40 pages. I may not be a good enough writer to carry it off, I may not find the free time to draw the damn thing, lettering it will be a pain and colouring – sheesh, who has time for that.

But it feels nice to have a focus, really. Something to think of as a hobby away from the day job.

Maybe this could be my hobby.

(Also: I might write it and pitch is somewhere, which would be an interesting experience if nothing else)

I won’t apologies for missing days (as much as I want to) you may well be enjoying the breaks.

A recap of Day 2 : Recall we’ve started a novel (I mean, it was right there in the blurb of the podcast that this is the whole point of the thing, but it still surprised me to be asked) and day 1 was a bunch of “Maybe’s” about what that novel could be about. Well, day 2 was “let’s write the cover blub”. This felt like torture for me, especially since I hadn’t really settled on a novel, though it feels like I’m basically – from my maybe’s and blurb – rewriting John Carter. Except my John Carter is an accountant, and this is probably going to be a(n attempt at a) funny novel. (Though fair warning: my heart isn’t in this chunk of the podcast, since my focus is and remains with writing comics, so I’m trying not to get too worried about the large amount of cliched plots I’m going to regurgitate).

So, recap down, day 3 is … let’s take the climactic end sequence and write it. Can’t know where to start without knowing where we’re ending, right?

I only decided today it might be a funny story, yesterday it was serious, I really am making this up as I go along – can’t you tell?

So, that said, usual caveats apply, there’s stupid repetition, it’s appallingly unoriginal, and wears its influences on all eight of it’s sleeves, here’s the climactic battle scene in “The Call” (or, possibly, “Called to Account”) and it tapers off since my 10 minutes were up, and there’s no way I’m working past the bell…

Peter stood, finally, in the great hall. The obsidian columns lined the marbled flooring. Above him the stars of an unfamiliar galaxy. Home was nothing but a distant memory now. He stood, white shirt, shredded. Power surging through him from the Galoga Root, in his hand he held the Sword of Antimon. He took off his broken glasses. The root not only gave him incredible power, but increased his senses, he no longer needed his reading glasses, so tossed them aside.

Prince Astoria held her breath near the doorway, in the corner of his eye he could see her chest raise and fall slowly, channeling her psionic energy through him.

Gone now, where the memories of working in the Accounts Department of Flemming, Flemming and Fulton.

Gone too, was Peter Aaronovitch.

Now there was only Peter The Great.

Peter The Great, and the Monster.

“Hahaha! You pathetic Worm, so you’ve tasted the root of power, at last, and you think you can best me”

Its voice grated through him. The creatures eight arms bulged and crackled with energy. Each held a sword and it raised itself to full ten feet tall. Stretching the arms out, holding the swords at length, bristling and ready to fight.

“I can’t best you…”

“Not on my own”

Behind Peter the swelled ranks of the armies of the Avalon Guard poured out from doorways lining the hall. Surrounded Peter and the Creature.

The princess continued to concentrated, Peter bowed his head slightly before snapping his head up, and blasting the thing with beams of pure energy from his eyes

“THIS ENDS NOW!”

The creature stumbled back, the army stepped forward ready to attack, waiting for Peter’s word.

Then, suddenly, the creature expanded it’s arms out, the energy swirled around him and poured out to the crowd, blasting through them, exploding people left and right, he’d been tricked. The creature was using Peter’s own power against them all.

He tried to stop, he thrust his arm in front of his face, hoping it would stop the energy, but just as he did so, the Princess collapsed, exhausted. It had been too much for her. And too much for the allies that Peter had spent the last year building up.

Dead. All dead.

Except for Peter and the Monster.

It relaxed, and walked towards him. Still towering over him, this thing with tusks, and arms.

Glad your still with me, if you are, and if you’re one of the few people I’ve chatted to tempted to do this bootcamp too, tell me how you’re doing!

Ok, this week we finally take off the training wheels and begin the nitty gritty of actually writing a novel. NOW… I’m not that interested in writing a novel, I don’t feel I have any great big long form work in me (maybe we all have one book in us, I don’t feel like that – I do feel like I’ve hundreds of stupid stories in me, well, mostly stupid, and that’s fine by me).

If you know me, you’ll know, my long term aim is comic writing, and I started this bootcamp simply to build the confidence that I could do that. I’ve currently laid out the plot of a 40 page Bondian adventure that I’m chipping away at (I’ll either pitch this to Dynamite or turn it into my own super spy adventure)

But a novel? Nope, no interest.

That said, it’d be a bit of a cheat to get this far in the bootcamp and abandon ship now (though I have form on this).

So today Tim asked us to type up a bunch of things that we might consider our novel about and if you don’t already have a novel, maybe some things a novel could be about. Prefacing each statement with the words “it might be…” so we don’t end up too fixed in our ideas. We want the flexibility to move and change as the writing progresses and to be open to other, potentially contradictory possibilities.

I hard to start with something… and so I began with what I know

(And feel free to ignore the rest, but these are my novel notes… lame, unimaginative, idiotic and raw and ready to be abandoned at a moment’s notice)

It might be a novel about a man whose life is very like mine who goes through an extraordinary adventure and ends with him realising that he has the best life already.

He might work a dull job, as an office clerk, in accounts. Possibly he’ll find something or something that shouldn’t happen will happen to him. Something that suggests the world is deeper and more complex than he assumes (maybe despite his longing for a more interesting life he’s long since settled into assuming it’s never going to get that interesting). He might be a game player, someone whose day time is spend dealing with numbers, he may well keep fantasy figures at his desk. He might be single. Or separated. He may be 30, He may be a virgin.

He might open a doorway to another dimension, or unexpectedly find himself the nexus of some great prophecy, a hero to an entire universe.

He might be required to save the kingdom, the girl, and become king.

He might return to his own world, changed, but glad that things aren’t just as nuts.

His name might be Peter.

He might love a work collegue called Carol-Anne or Caroline, or Carol or Carrie. (Maybe carrie, which he likes because it’s the same as Carrie Anne Moss from The Matrix)

Maybe creatures arrive on earth as he’s walking to work and he has to help them.

He might be an engineer, and maybe this skill will be what saves them?

He might reject the princess. He might sweep Carrie off her feet.

He might have a mild stammer.

He might be glad that the universe is simpler where he’s from.

He might have to fight the mighty villain. (this might be, basically the plot of He Man)

He might say something like “Jesus, what the hell am I supposed to do, I’m just an accountant. I’m not even sure how the coffee machine works!”

And the princess might respond “No, my name is not “Jesus”, nor do I know what a coffee machine is, but you are aCountANT! Hero of my people”

He may be part of a propecy, he may have accidentally altered their future, he may have accidentally altered their past.

Today’s Couch to 80k Podcast episode Week 6 day 6 is about creating your own writer’s manifesto, done primarily as a way for you to get to know what it is you’re doing this for. Tim suggests this, like all other entries, really doesn’t need to be thought of as something others will ever see – but me being an oversharing drama queen is sharing mine here.

I have a clear idea of why I want to write, it’s maybe not as fancy as I’ve written it in the manifesto (such as it is, remember it’s simply a 10 minute free write on why you want to write, so it will veer and contradict itself and sound rambly or nonsensical, I’m ok with all of that).

Basically I want to write because I have ideas that I want to see finished. That’s it. They bounce round my head, year after year every so often popping up and saying “OH HAI PAUL – remember me! I’m that idea you wrote down slightly differently every two months of 2012 but never actually finished”. The only ideas that I’ve had that feel “at peace” (as it were) are ones where I’ve handed them off to a writer and we’ve either co-written them, or the writer has done a better job than I ever would. I just want the voices to stop, man!

Anyway, I have plenty of other things to do today that are unrelated to writing (I’ve got two scripts right now that need read, both by very accomplished writers, so figured best to get my scabby efforts out of the way before seeing what they have ahead of me)

From a purely selfish point of view, and most acts of creation are purely selfish – arguably, the very best are, I want to write to bring different worlds to life. I don’t want to write a kitchen sink drama and have that define who I am as a writer, I want to write a kitchen sink drama, then a sci-fi epic, then a short comedy, then a James Bond story, then a quiet introspective piece.

I want to exercise all the different storytelling muscles in side me. I want to take the joy of telling an anecdote to two or three people in a small group and expand that to a much bigger audience and a much bigger anecdote that builds and builds to be a proper story.

I want to never feel bored of a genre, I want to dip in and out of different stories. I want to sit and think about a story, immerse myself in it, and enjoy the telling of it – to laugh at how ridiculous some of the ideas are, maybe for their scale, maybe for their silliness, maybe for how just-so-perfect they are and obvious in hindsight that, of course, this was always the way this should be, but still surprise people in the telling.

I would like an audience to hold their breath as I control exactly what point the hero saves the day.

I want thrill power, I want to be up-lifted as a writer, and a reader of the work. I want to write stories that I want to read. I want to find the gaps in the work that other writers leave and fill them with my imagination, expanding new worlds out from those in between places.

I want to finish things. I want to put my fingers on a keyboard, type “in the beginning” and not finish until I write “the end” and everything in between makes perfect sense and is, in it’s own way, a little parcel of perfection, telling one story that is complete and moving on to the next one.

It would be nice to make money doing this, but I’m not doing this for money, I’m doing it for me.

On the plus side that means I really can write what I want to write, no concession to editors, no concession to publishers, no concession to readers.

On the other hand, my natural instinct is to make things that I hope people will wildly enjoy. An audience who come out punching the air.

I want to write Alien, I want to write The Seven Voyages of Sinbad, I want to write Hellboy, I want to write the fantastic and I want it to be fantastic.

Week 5 broke me a little, and I discovered it’s ok to cheat and miss and episode (since Tim isn’t likely to come round my house and demand I get back on that horse) so, of course, week 6 got tough – I find it nice and easy to just play with freewriting – just fill 10 minutes of my brain vomiting out nonsense to see where it goes. Of course, that’s only part of writing (probably the best part). There’s also making things make sense, stylistic choices, metaphor, similie, opening sentances, you know… actual work.

And that brings us to Week 6.

This has largely been writing things then rewriting them with specific stylistic choices (week 1: write a couple of minutes about something you’ve done, make it as straightforward as possible. NOW! Make it as flowery as possible, filled with metaphor, etc)

Today was take a first sentence from a novel and rewrite it, keeping the same basic structure but making it about anything else, really.

I do love a first line of a novel, when I was a student a Queen’s University Belfast, in the hallway of the student Union, where I’d sit while waiting on a rehearsal room to free up for whatever play it was I was doing at the time, the wall was festooned with first lines of novels, and I loved reading them. So many clever ways in.

As it happened, I grabbed a big old copy of the HP Lovecraft book Necronomicon for no other reason than it was the first novel I could see beside my drawing board (where I’m currently typing) and picked one story at random (truth to tell I wasn’t sure what the exercise was gonna be about, so didn’t seem like any choice would be a bad choice) and ended up with The Lurking Fear.

Here’s the first line of it:

There was a thunder in the air on the night I went to the deserted mansion atop Tempest Mountain to find the lurking fear.

(I’m now half convinced I played a Choose Your Own Adventure Game like this)

Anyway, the mission was to take the structure of this sentance, and replace all the nouns/verbs/adverbs/whatever with new ones to get a sentance with the same structure, but different things happening in it, so, for example:

There was a crackle in the fridge on the afternoon I went to the empty pizza place beside Macdonalds to find the ominous smell.

(That’s a terrible example, but you get my drift).

Now, I’ll be honest here, part of me is thinking “no! I want to write comics, not prose, and this is all about prose” so my brain slightly checking out – but that’s just me going “also this is HARD and I wanted this to be easy”.

Anyway, getting back on the horse means getting up early again and doing this stuff while everyone is asleep; that seems to be the best way to go.